Audience Engagement

Of all the quantifiable statistics that describe the tick and tock of a website’s operations, bounce rate is among the most severely misunderstood.

Especially as the web goes mobile, media companies need to think strategically about monetization, every time someone loads the page.

The world of digital media is constantly evolving, and the only way for publishers to keep up is to make sure that their next piece of content or audience development campaign is more effective than the one that preceded it. Indeed, the most successful publishers don’t just find a gameplan that works and stick with it, but rather they rigorously investigate their past results for changes they can make to improve performance. In Part 1 of our three-part series around how online publishers grow their businesses with Taboola, we’ll look at how two of our partners — Scroll.in and Refinery29 — use data to refine their distribution strategies and make their content more appealing to readers. Build Your Audience Through Strategic Paid Promotion Building an audience from scratch is a tall order for any new publisher, regardless of how good its content is. Not only do new media brands need […]

Publishers around the world are seeing a boom in mobile web traffic, but meeting those users’ expectations once they arrive on-site remains an ongoing challenge. Earlier this year, when Google incorporated mobile responsiveness into its search rankings (see our “Mobilegeddon” post here), the average bounce rate for audiences using smartphones was close to 60 percent. The shift towards mobile represents a major opportunity for the industry at large, but it also requires publishers to better understand the nuances of how user behavior differs across desktop and mobile devices. When a smartphone user clicks through to an article that was created with a desktop-first mindset, they are much more likely to bounce, especially if they arrived from a social channel like Facebook or Twitter, where an endless stream of content is just a back-click away. Taboola’s product and account management teams have been paying close attention to these patterns, proactively testing […]

  Mobile needs to be a core part of every publisher’s strategy. Across the entire Taboola network, publishers are seeing more than half their traffic from smartphones and tablets— up from an average of 25% at the beginning of last year. While a responsive web design should be par for the course at this point, it is not enough of a strategy to ensure the satisfaction of your smartphone and tablet readers. Mobile traffic is fundamentally different from desktop traffic in that it is more likely to come from social media and to be accessing your site from a slower internet connection. As a result, these users exhibit different behaviors and have different needs that should be met if you are going to keep them engaged with your content. Earlier this year, we shared a collection of 7 tips for optimizing your mobile monetization strategy. Today, we’re sharing 4 new […]

Personalization has long been a topic of conversation within technology and media circles, but the intensity of that discourse has ramped up in recent years due to the rise of social media. “The users have voted by going to Facebook for their news,” said Nick Denton, the founder and CEO of Gawker Media Group. “Personalization may be the biggest issue in online media today.” Last week, over 60 attendees gathered at Gawker’s new HQ in Downtown Manhattan to hear from a select panel of executives whose companies are each grappling with the challenges and opportunities around “personalization.” Joining Nick on stage was our own Adam Singolda, founder and CEO of Taboola; Ian Fette, CTO at Gawker Media Group; and Daniel Doubrovkine, CTO at Artsy. While computer engineers have been experimenting with forms of “machine learning” since the 90s, Adam remarked that the these projects are becoming more important as companies […]

Earlier this morning, we announced our exclusive, multi-year partnership with Johnston Press, one of the UK’s largest local and regional multimedia organizations with 20 million unique visitors every month. As part of the collaboration, Taboola’s personalized content recommendations will be integrated across Johnston Press’ network of over 200 desktop and mobile sites, including The Scotsman, The Yorkshire Post, Belfast Newsletter and The News, Portsmouth, driving audience engagement and creating a significant new revenue stream for the publisher. As mobile traffic becomes more and more important to Johnston Press, Taboola’s predictive technology, which is fully optimized for both desktop and mobile devices, has served as a valuable multi-platform solution for the publisher. In fact, mobile traffic now accounts for 48% of all traffic in the UK, according to a report by UK-based internet marketing firm Affiliate Window. Johnston Press has a long history of serving high-quality content to audiences throughout the […]

In a recent post, we covered the legacy of sponsored content—from advertorials in print publications to “branded entertainment” on TV—that paved the way for today’s native advertising. But despite this long history, and the fact that most of us are exposed to native advertising every day, many people still have a narrow understanding of “native” and the many different forms it can take to help publishers better monetize their business. By expanding our definition of native to encompass more diverse forms of branded content, publishers can tap into a multi-billion dollar market, bolster their overall businesses, and take back revenue from the industry’s “Goliath” that is commandeering too much of the digital media space today. The Native We Know: On-Site Custom Branded Content Most people who are familiar with the phrase “native advertising” think of it in terms of those prominent examples cited in our previous post, namely branded content […]

Have you ever wondered why there are so many different social networks? Users engage differently. Learn the importance of knowing your audience.

Following up on Part 1 of our recap, NBCUniversal News Group’s Elisabeth Sami joined us at Taboola’s global headquarters in New York City to speak with WIRED Contributing Editor Spencer Reiss about her role as SVP of Strategy and Business Development. Her team oversees both esteemed news brands (NBC News, MSNBC, and CNBC) and digital news start-ups (Breaking News, Stringwire, NowThis). Media has always been driven by technology Throughout the talk, Sami expressed a tone of optimism about the future of media. Although digital consumption is impacting network TV viewership, news consumption is growing overall, creating an opportunity for news organizations to continue investing in and reaching audiences across platforms. The NBCU News Group constantly identifies new ways to deepen engagement with consumers. That might be through news feeds on Twitter and Facebook, on smartphone or tablet apps, or on set top box applications through connected TVs. Reiss asked whether […]